Misfits: When your offer and audience aren't right for each other (Ep#10)

If your offer's not selling well, how do you know where the problem lies? Is it the wrong offer for your audience?

And if it is, do you change the audience or the offer?

That's what we're talking about today in the Upside-Up Marketing Podcast - as well as what you can actually do about it.

As a solopreneur running your own small business, this all falls to you so my aim is to help you focus on the right things - the things that matter - to you and to your ideal client!

You can download your complimentary guide to "Three Techniques to Validate Your Offer Before You Launch" here: https://www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/validate

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Transcript

0:00

So you put out your new offer to your audience, sit back and wait for the applause, the appreciation, the sales. Uh, but the silence is deafening. We've all been there. When that happens, you find yourself asking two questions. It's the problem with the offer? Is the offer just not fit for this audience. Or is the problem that the audience wasn't the right fit for the offer. Now how you approach this will depend on how you're building your business, because ultimately it's for you to decide if the offer audience fit is not right. What are you going to do? Are you going to change that offer? Or are you going to change that audience? That's what we're talking about on today's edition of the upside up marketing podcast. How to gauge if the fit was off, how to make the change, if it was and how to make sure that your audience and your offer fit together perfectly. And at the end, I'm going to be sharing something that you can use to attract more of the right people from the off. So be sure to stick around for that. Roll the titles. Using marketing to persuade people to buy your thing is hard, icky and not an effective use of your time. It's an upside down way of doing things. Introducing Upside Up Marketing. Helping you create offers people want to buy and share them in a way that feels good. All over a nice cup of tea. Hello. Welcome to today's episode of the upside, that marketing podcast you'll have to excuse my appearance. If you are watching on video on YouTube, um, it's been a bit of a craziest morning this morning. It was pouring down with rain for the school run. Then we got halfway school where I was with forgotten the trumpet. So I had to sprint home to get the Trump, but sprint back here, it's been crazy town around. Oh, hi, by the way, if we haven't met yet, my name is Katie Spreadbury and I help people create offers. People actually want to buy. And create content people actually want to read. Basically I help you as a business, really, really understand the people that you want to work with most, so you can attract more of them and work with more of them and have more impact and make more money. today, we're looking at how to tell. If you have got the right people in your audience for your offer, the right offer for your audience. Um, what to do if they're not aligned. So I just saw and I've. On YouTube. Um, I'm going to certainly caught my attention, but. It started. Just open, straight in with, have you ever wondered why every single home in the UK doesn't have spray foam in chelation? Funnily enough. No, no, I ha I haven't whoever you were. I didn't stick around long enough to see even who, who the effort was from. I can safely say that has never for a moment cross my mind. I don't know what audience promises you had set for your effort, but that was a wide missed. It goes without saying, if you're going to make sales in your business, you need to make sure your offer is a good fit for the people you're presenting it to because you can have a fantastic offer. But if you're showing it to people that don't need it. You're not going to make any sales. So if you find that that's not the case and that you offer any audience, don't quite fit together. What do you do as a business? Do you change your offer and bends to your audiences every need? Or do you. Change your audience. So you stick with your offer, but change the people that you are presenting it to. Firstly, you have to identify whether it is the offer audience fit in the first place. So if you've put something out and it's not made the sales that you hoped. Is this what it is? Is it that there isn't a fit or have you just not, um, presented it properly? Or maybe you didn't talk about it enough or maybe you didn't get it in front of enough people. So I've actually got with just the thing to help you with this. I'll, I'll let you know about it at the end, how you can download it. But I have a free guide, which is three techniques to validate your offer before you launch it. Um, and this gives you three exercises that you can do to make sure there's a need for your offer, a desire for your offer And no obvious obstacles. It's your audience signing up to it before you put it out there, giving you the best chance of success. Um, you can grab the full guy from the link in the show notes. Like I say, I'll talk about it more at the end of this podcast, but I'm going to share the first of the three exercises with you, because I think that is relevant right now when we're talking about, first of all, you have to work out whether it is the offer, not being a fit for your audience, that has been the problem. And the reason for yours. Slow sales because it's easy to jump to conclusions. Um, but it's better to jump to conclusions when you have evidence. The best time to do this is before you even design the offer. But if you'll be on that stage now don't worry. This can also be used to fix an offer. That's not working as well as you hoped. So one way to gauge a need among your audience is to ask them a question to confirm. Uh, the, the problem that the offer addresses is actually a problem. Your audience are facing. because if it's not, you've got an uphill battle. If you have to go and find the people who need the offer first. So one big mistake. I see people making hair all the time is to ask the direct question. If I created an offer that gave you X, Y, Z, would you be interested? It does sound like the logical question to us. Doesn't it. But the human brain is a funny thing. Um, in fact, this approach may actually give you misleading information. So, I mean, direct questions when you are trying to find out about your audience. I have a really, really tricky thing to do. People don't really know. Why. They do what they do. They don't really know what they're going to do in future. Um, if you're asking. I've got this offer, you know, if I pay. At this offer, create this offer. Would you be interested? Number one, people are generally nice. They want to appear supportive. They'd offer positive feedback regardless of the actual interest they might think. Oh yeah, that would probably be really nice for some people, not for me, but some people would like that. That is not useful for you to know, but that's the answer you, you will get. Um, so yeah, generally people will be. Over supportive of it. Um, your real target audience might stay silent due to privacy concerns or worry about opening themselves up to hard selling tactics. You know, how many times have you responded to what you thought was in it as an engagement question on social media only to be hit with a pitch? Like no one wants that. So a lot of people won't speak up. Um, so yeah, that is what I need because they don't want to open themselves up to getting DMS when it comes out. Uh, you know, they want it, they want the space to make their own decision without that pressure. So, that's another reason these sort of questions don't always work. Um, Without the content context of all your content and everything you're going to say around it. People struggle to accurately gauge what is their need or their interest. You know, you haven't done the work to frame the problem, build the desire, really communicate why it's valuable for them just going out there and saying, if I run this, would it be valuable? It's a really hard question for people to answer. Um, like you're relying on them having identified the problem, having identified its priority. I know they're in the market to invest in a fix. And not many people are there yet. That's why we have content. After all. So we can't place too much weight on the answers we get from a question like that. So when you're trying to gauge whether that there is a need for your offer and your audience, the absolute one of the worst ways you can do it, I would actually say is to go out and say, if I created this offer, would you be interested? I think that is. Worse than useless. Cause he could actually be misleading. Try asking this instead. And in the free guide, I'll give you a lot more context around this and example was, uh, but essentially the question is which of these best describes how you feel about the area your offer will solve and then give them three options. The first one being I'm all over it. I'm an expert. I've got this nailed. I've got this sorted. It's fine. Second. Answer being, oh, I'm okay. But could be better. And the third answer being, I don't even know where to start or I'm a complete beginner here, or I haven't done that yet. Or, you know, something along the lines of, um, you know, they're at the starting point, basically. And you're looking for a good chunk of your audience to be saying they could be better or that they've not yet started. Uh, it doesn't have to be all of them. It doesn't even have to be half of them, but a good chunk, a decent number enough to make it worth you putting something in front of them. Basically, you know, if you put it in front of them, would there be enough of them who needed it for it to be worth your while bearing mind, not everyone that needs it is going to convert for various other reasons. You don't might not be their priority right now. It might not be, um, you know, they might not resonate with the way you communicate it. They might want to solve it. Just not with you. You know, there might be lots of other reasons they don't buy. So not everyone who says, yes, I need, this is going to buy it. But you need to know that is a need there. Um, and if you know, a good chunk of people do give you either of those two options. And then congratulations, you've identified a need. If not though, what do you do? What do you do? Now I'm not talking about what do you do? Okay. You spend more effort doing your marketing to convince them. That's what you need. I'm not talking about marketing to build desire. That's a whole different topic, which we can cover in other episodes., I mean, if like just the offer is just totally not fit for the audience. I said like, you've. Attracted an audience of people who are right at the beginning of business, and you're trying to sell them a high-end ad strategy. Or you've, um, had your audience a long time and they've all like grown and developed with you. And they've been at this for like several years now. And your trucks stores trying to tell like beginner level stuff, like, um, you know, if you've had the same businesses following you for five years launched your first lead magnet, probably isn't going to be that appealing to them. Yeah. So there's really not a fit. There is one talking about. If you find that's the case, are you going to change the offer or are you going to change the audience? Now. All this will come down to how you have defined. Your niche. All you that as a business is your whole reason for your business. To support the people you want to support is the, who they are, the core defining thing of your nature of your business. So you've decided your passion is supporting a particular group of people. with a particular issue, for example, new, mum's trying to start a business or vegan athletes, or career-driven female struggling with confidence. You know, if your whole passion and raise on Detra, um, is around supporting these people. Then it's the offer you're going to want to change, you know, if you have really identified yourself with a group of people like that, it's usually because you've been through that journey yourself, or, you know, you've got some other personal reasons for being really passionate about it. You don't want to start then moving away from that because the particular offer you've come up with doesn't quite fit those people. However much you love doing that work. If your passion is helping those people. Moving away from that is going to hurt your business in the long run. So, your niche is your people and you need an offer to sell that. So if that is the case, then your approach, you need to fix it is to do some deeper work, digging around these people's desires, their barriers, their needs, actually getting out there and speaking to a bunch of them will really help with this. Although, remember what I said earlier about direct questions, we're looking for more contextual stuff like what's actually going on in their lives. What are they struggling with? How's that impacting them? With this group, if this is the issue, then you need to be getting into their shoes and really understanding them so that you can tweak your offer, shape your offer, to meet what they actually need to support them. To get to the goal you want to help them reach. Um, now I'm going to have an episode very soon lined up, which is going to go into this more detail, how to have these conversations and do this research. Um, but if you can't wait, get yourself signed up to your, my emails. Cause this is the kind of thing I talk about all the time. This is where I really love from. Getting my hands dirty and getting into the weeds of it. So, uh, So, yeah. Um, download the free guide I talked about and get yourself signed up to my emails. Cause I've, I can give you lots of tips there. Um, And yeah, listen out for that future episode when it comes. If, however, you're sure the offer is the thing you want to go with. You know, you're bringing a very specific skillset to your work, or you've just found the thing that lights you up that you love working on. And it. Happens not to be the perfect fit for the group of followers. You've amassed. Then we need to look at attracting a different type of people into your audience. Um, your niece is in your solution and the solution you provide and your unique way of doing it. And you need to find the people that match that. Now most likely if you've had your business for a while, you've been building an audience of followers, friends, connections that have some interest in what you're doing. Um, I'm guessing you're not starting from page one here. But just because people. Have the sort of problem you solve or are interested in what you have to say. It doesn't necessarily make them a good fit for your office. So chances are the people in your audience are close. But not quite. Uh, on, on the money. Literally. So, for example, when I first started my business, I was just learning the ropes of online marketing myself. My whole background is in research and understanding people. So I was learning how to do marketing myself and how to apply that to it. So I found myself messaging to people at the very start of their journey, people who were just one step behind me in terms of the marketing, they would be creating with the ideal client knowledge. I was helping them to amass. I spent a lot of time working with people, helping them figure out who they wants to work with, who was this ideal client and getting the basic building blocks of their business in place. Now I'm a lot more competent and a lot more confident in how the insights I help people uncover are used in the online marketing space, how they can be applied to offers to content, you know, to the really detailed stuff. And I'm able to help people take much larger leaps by working with people who already know the ins and outs of how to do the marketing, and I'm just helping them make it more effective. So who my audience is and the way. I attract them has had to change. To attract in the right people to your audience is challenging, involves a lot more focus and precision than just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks. You're not trying to bring in anyone you're trying to bring in the right people. One popular way of attracting people into our world is through lead magnets. Now, if you're not familiar with the term, a lead bank is usually free or low cost thing that you share to encourage someone to join you, your world, most commonly your email list, but it could be. It could be to follow you or Facebook group or whatever. Um, so it could, this could be a free guide, a PDF, an ebook, a master class, a private podcast, a checklist, the first module of your course. whatever you're putting out there that. People might want enough to part with that email address for. Sometimes. He loves lead. Magnets can bring in loads of people. So you think, oh great. These people are coming in. Oh, but they're not converting. So what do I need to change? Do I need to change my sales page? Multiple blah, blah, blah. Sometimes it's the lead magnet. That's the problem. Our target. Shouldn't be to get as many people into our audience as possible. That's why I'll never be impressed by your vanity metrics. I don't care how many people are on your list. I don't care how many followers you've got come back and tell me how many of them I do. Perfect clients. And then I'm listening. The numbers don't matter what matters is how many of the right people you have. And if you're using a lead back there that for example, sales a very, very basic problem or a general problem or a problem that's only adjacent to your offer. So it's not quite, it's the similar thing that the same sort of people were born, but not. Exactly related to it. It might be that it's just not attracting the sort of people who are actually going to buy. In fact, even if your lead magnet helps them take the first steps to solving the problem, your offer solves. This could kill your off a dead before as people take that first step and think, right. I've got enough to have a batch of it myself now. Um, and by the time they realized that they actually do need your help, that time has passed. And they've forgotten about you. Everyone's a free behinds to begin with. So don't worry about attracting freebie hunters. Your lead magnet needs to build the case from the off for them working with you. Um, so I've been working with for a long time, many years now with a guy called Kennedy from email marketing here, heroes. Um, he's one of the best marketing brains in the industry and he's framework for a lead magnet. He calls it the boat, an island framework. If you give them the boat for free, they can just take that boat and sail off to the island themselves. However, if you give them the iron for free. They'd say, oh, I've got this great boat that will get you there. Do you want to buy that? They need the boat to get them there. So they're more likely to invest in the offer. Do you see, what do you see? How about it's different? So rather than giving them that first step, you give them that last step and then your offer is the thing that takes them to it. So that is how you're getting in the people who. They want the result that you give. but they need the way to get there. So, instead of thinking about your freebies, Lead magnet for growing your audience. I want you to be a bit more specific than that. Think of it as a qualified lead magnet. For growing your clients. You're not just trying to bring anyone into grow your audience. You are trying to grow the number of people you have who are actually buying from you. So think of your lead magnet in those terms and suddenly the focus of it and what you would put in it shifts completely. When you think of the job of your lead magnet being to pull as many people in as possible. It's easy to lose focus. So think of that, reframe, think about that in terms of it bringing in new buyers, not just new followers and see, see where that takes you.'cause, I don't care if your participation in that summit brought in a thousand new people to your email list. If none of them want to buy from you. You'd have been better off spending more time, a smaller event bringing in 10 qualified leads if even one of them bought from you. Um, so just think about it like that. It's not about the numbers. It's about it's quality over quantity to use a cliche. So in a moment, I'm going to share something to help you with that, to help you make sure you're attracting the right people into your audience. Uh, but just remember it all starts with checking the fit. And as I mentioned earlier, I do have a free guide, the three techniques to validate your offer before you launch, I've given you one of them already, so you can see how easy they are to implement. Um, which will help you decide if audience fit is the issue for you. And if this is the bit you need to be looking at before you start looking at how you've written your sales page or anything like that. Um, if it is, it would also give you all the ideas that you need on either how to reposition your offer. So it's something your current audience wants. Or get the questions instead in front of the right people to learn how to fix your qualified lead magnet, qualified lead magnet. To bring in more of the right people. Okay. So sign up to the link in the show notes and download your guide now so you can stop wasting time. But in the wrong offers in front of the right people or the right offers in front of the wrong people or the wrong offers in front of the wrong people. And stuck getting the right offers in front of the right people and making more sales in your business. So the link you need is www.orange, sheep research, or one word.co.uk forward slash validate that's www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk forward slash by the date. Download your copy right now, it will come straight to your inbox. And that link is in the show notes. So you can get it in just one click. Okay. So I promised I'd share something with you that you can do to attract the right people from the off. and that is to ask everyone the moment they join your world. So sign up for your list. Join your Facebook group, wherever it is. I asked them, why are you here? What is it you're hoping I can help you with, why did you choose to join my world? What made them sign up your emails? What made you hit follow? What made you join that Facebook group? Whatever it is. Because by looking at what people are expecting you to help them with, you can very quickly see whether your content. Or attraction content to bring people into your world is actually doing its job. If they're being very general, I need help with my business. I need help with my marketing. Your lead magnet needs to get more specific and he's tightening up your e-banking. Sort of content that you put out to a cold audience. Remember, we're looking for the right people, not any people. So make sure that you're talking to the exact problems you solve and results that you can deliver. If they're not looking for what you do at all, the whole angle needs change. You know, maybe you've got a bit distracted and spent too long talking about something completely irrelevant. Like I'm in my niche. It's very easy to get swept up with talking about general business life and advice on running your business because I'm in the thick of it doing it, but that's not what I actually helped people with. So if I'm spending too much time in my content about that, and people are following me for that, they're not necessarily my people. Um, if however, they are spot on looking for your solution, you've nailed it. So ask this, um, A great place to put this as, as a survey question embedded in the thank you page. After someone signs up. Um, It could be in your first email to them. It could be in your Facebook group questions. It could be like when someone follows you, you can send them a quick DMO. Hi, welcome to my world, blah, blah, blah. Uh, yeah. Just wondering what it was you saw that made you hit follow. What w what did you like? Um, wherever you can think to add it, just be creative and get out there and ask them. Cause then you can very quickly see if that message is going out to a cold audience or your lead magnet and everything like that. It's actually bringing in the right people and don't forget to pay attention to the answers. They'll give you as well as just giving you this general idea, they'll give you a whole host of information in terms of the sort of language people are using, you know, what they see us, our priorities, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a great question to get out there. So. In summary, make sure that the people you are attracting are spot on for your offer. They're in the right place. They need what you're setting. They won't what you're setting. Um, and the barriers they have to buying it are surmountable. A lot of advice online about building an audience, talks about the benefits to your business. Um, here's a bit of a preview of the next episode. If you're going to get those benefits. You yourself also need to be asking, thinking about what are the benefits to them? Why are they here? Why are they sticking around? So that's what I'll be talking about next week, because once you've got them, you want to be able to keep them. But for now. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review, share it with your friends, share it on your social was telling them what you liked about it. Uh, it means world to me and also helps others discover the upside up way. So until next time, take care.